Since 2017, a plethora of sports betting sites and apps have been shifting towards offering bettors the opportunity to place bets discretely from anywhere using their smartphones. The convenience that this provides has been a great marketing move that has paid off handsomely by attracting a staggering number of new users to online sports betting. However, there have been challenges when it comes to payment systems especially when it comes to traditional payment services and digital wallets who have always been circumspect about supporting online gambling. While this would have represented a dead end of sorts in the past, the utilization of specialized payment gateways in facilitating bankroll funding and payouts in online casinos took over.
Even though these services can be thought of as saviors to the online gambling scene, their involvement has in many ways amplified the risks of failure and fraud. The aforementioned payment gateways and services are always under threat from hackers and other cyber-criminals. Even handicapper sites and services that usually offer paid analyses to less savvy bettors do not always produce the wins that they promise to gamblers.
To address these issues, stakeholders in the online gambling industry are looking into blockchain technology. Several efforts are already being made in order to create better online betting experiences. Just to mention a few, HEROcoin is an effort that aims to decentralize sports betting, BlitzPredict through its aggregation service intends to provide gamblers with trustworthy insights and Electroneum’s token is designed to be used a digital currency in online gambling sites.
Facilitation of Easier Funding and Payouts
Unlike traditional means, payments made using blockchain are much faster as the tokens do not need to be routed through several financial institutions or clearing houses. In essence, this gives the users ultimate power over how and when they use their money. Furthermore, Electroneum which is a relatively new cryptocurrency has set a pace for allowing easy estimation of digital currencies and fiat currency by limiting its token to two decimal places.
Transparency
Blockchain powered platforms such as HEROcoin are offering great ways of achieving transparency and fairness by making betting a peer-to-peer and decentralized activity. Not only do users get to trace the flow of money and the terms but they also are allowed to define the conditions of wagers through smart contracts.
Trustworthy Insights
Services like BlitzPredict promote quality insights by allowing analytic enthusiasts to share their prediction models with other users. High performing models in BlitzPredict’s framework are rewarded with the platform’s own token which can then be used to place bets using the platform. This kind of rewards mechanism encourages gamblers to make data-driven decisions rather than relying on bad advice or hunches.
